PRhyme Discuss Their Origins & Recording in 2014

Royce Da 5'9" and DJ Premier, otherwise known as PRhyme, open up about their recording relationship

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12/9/14

Royce Da 5'9" and DJ Premier, the dream duo behind PRhyme, have been recording together for fifteen years now, a working friendship that came easily.

"We built a great relationship just off of working with each other and it's like a 'real recognize real' kind of thing. We vibe really similar. If it's not broke, don't fix it. If I do a project, he's one of the first people who is going to pop into my mind because it's just automatic chemistry," Royce Da 5'9" told Fuse. "Every time I've done an album, I've went to Premier. After you kind of hit your mark with someone creatively, and people like it and it connects with people, they start to demand that you do more together."

To be great, you have to learn from the greats. DJ Premier credits his success to his family and his musical inspirations. "The pioneers who did it before me, I studied them so I could be great. Then being a consumer of vinyl and buying records," he started. "I'm a big concertgoer because of my mother. My mother is an art teacher, she taught art. Everyone in my neighborhood knows my mother. She's that known for art class. That's how I learned how to do graffiti and everything. She used to say 'You can't go outside and play until you draw something.' I used to draw a football, speakers and a record player all the time... That transcended into going record shopping with my mother. From there we used to go to concerts." Sounds like it paid off!

"The stars were kind of aligned. It just kind of fell into place," Royce explained. "The idea is too good. [PRhyme collaborator] Adrian [Younge] is catching steam. He's doing something that we've never seen in hip hop. He's creating this music that everybody is sampling. I have this great relationship with Prem. We find somebody who is a wizard at sampling in hip hop. I've got the number one guy right here. Then we've got Adrian right here who we have a relationship with. Let's take advantage of the opportunity to do this project before somebody else takes the idea because that's how it works in hip hop. It was one of those things where we just wanted to hurry up and do it so when I reached out to Prem and asked him how he felt about it and he was receptive to it, that was my sign right there. I'm a very metaphysical person. I feel like the universe was telling me that this was the time."